By BARBARA BULL (14J), Leesland Girls' School, Gosport, Hants.

The Qualities that make THE Vikings of old were children of the sea, loving the waves they fought and conquered, but as cruel as the surging waters they sailed.

Their swords ran red with blood, and their very name rang with the fear of death.

The Vikings of to-day—our Life-boatmen— they, too, are sons of the deep, but in place of pillage and sorrow, they bring life and hope.

These saviours of the shipwrecked stand tall and strong, stalwart as the rugged oaks of England, but physical prowess alone is not enough. They must love the sea, and know its thousand moods—the call of the ocean, perhaps handed down from those valiant Nordic pirates of long ago, must be in their veins. Brave they must be, and fearless, to venture out through the raging of the storm, through the flying spray and great foam- crested breakers to the succour of their fellow men at the mercy of the warring elements.

The man that risks his life to lessen the dreadful toll taken year by year by the merciless sea, must not only be courageous but unselfish and self-sacrificing, ready to offer the greatest sacrifice of all, that of his own life for another.

Those gnarled, rough hands, horny and seasoned by hard work and weather, must be capable of the gentleness of a woman, tenderly a Good Life-boatman.

handling the injured, or soothing children stricken with the fear of death. Calm in the most dangerous ordeal, on their alertness depends the safety of their precious cargo, so hardly won from the ravening grey-green jaws of the leaping billows. The willing hands and quick wits of the Life-boatmen have cheated the black teeth of the rocks of many a ship- wrecked crew.

To sally out into the black midnight when the screaming wind is whipping the water into a white seething turmoil, to leave a home and children behind, and, watched by the strain- ing eyes of anxious women, to go to the help of some stranded vessel, needs great strength of purpose, without which strength of body would avail nothing. They must have a cheery word for the frightened, some comfort for the bereaved, and a smile for each panic-stricken child.

They must have no thought of self, but stake all on the safety of the mariners who need their help on the waste of storm-tossed ocean, and show the chivalry of those knights of old renown that ride in endless fame down the pages of history.

Setting out with a smile into the exhilara- tion of a fight against the merciless forces of Nature, these splendid heroes show the eternal spirit of England, the spirit which makes her the greatest little country in the world..